SILBERKUPPE: ROOMS WITHOUT WALLS

Rooms Without Walls is an exhibition guest-curated by Silberkuppe, an independent space for contemporary art founded in Berlin in early 2008 by Dominic Eichler and Michel Ziegler. The show features a selection of visual artists, a collective, a pop band and an interior designer, all of whom – like Silberkuppe’s founders – have numerous points of intersection with the dense, informal networks of independent, multi-disciplinary, project-based, collaborative and collective-minded cultural production of post-1989 Berlin.

Suggesting a set of ‘rooms without walls’ created through social and creative networks, the exhibition includes sculpture, installations, film and video, wall works, documentation and performances. Martin Ebner presents a group of prints, some of which are informed by his contribution to the magazine Starship. Nicolas Siepen’s installation includes material relating to productions in an around the bookstore and publishing house b_books and other group initiatives, washed up on a metaphoric sandy shore inspired by the 1968 Paris graffiti: ‘Under the cobblestones, the beach!’. A useable seating platform by interior designer Janette Laverrière and a 16mm film work by Juliette Blightman that screens once every 13 hours suggest a wall-less room and a numberless clock for the use of Silberkuppe and their guests.

Rooms Without Walls also extends beyond the walls of the Hayward Gallery Project Space, as indicated by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy’s wall-painting. Isa Genzken’s witty bamboo sculpture, Hair that grows as it will (2002/9) sprouts above the Project Space from the gallery’s east sculpture terrace, while on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 November the artists groupbasso will be in residence in the Hayward’s Gallery’s Waterloo Sunset Pavilion, where they will collaborate with gallery visitors to create a temporary work, ISO (2009), to be installed in a usually inaccessible space beneath the west sculpture terrace during a drop-in performance on Sunday 29 November. By extending the exhibition across the Hayward Gallery’s site, Silberkuppe re-imagines the institution as a city-in-miniature, analogous to the patchwork, multilayered urban structure of Berlin.

‘When the Berlin Wall was still up, Silberkuppe’s neighbourhood Kreuzberg 36 felt like one of the most far-flung outposts of Western Europe. Then, as now, it has a strong multicultural community and is a haven for numerous subcultures. In the last two decades – prior to the development of Berlin into a gallery-driven international contemporary art capital – the progressive local art and culture scene was characterised by group and collective-minded and interrelated projects of many kinds. Alongside art exhibitions and events, its protagonists utilised temporary spaces, produced film and videos, published magazines and books and gathered in underground bars. These projects developed in context and responded critically to the radically and constantly changing economic, cultural and political landscape of Berlin. As a result they also continually adapted, giving rise to all manner of discursive constellations. One of the initial reasons for establishing Silberkuppe was to contribute to this ongoing tradition of independent, interdisciplinary and critical cultural activity.’ (Silberkuppe)

Guest curators: Dominic Eichler and Michel Ziegler, at the invitation of Tom Morton